Category Archives: Game Reviews

Test- und Erfahrungsberichte

Wii U: My first impressions

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It’s been 10 days now since I got my Wii U and after spending some quality time with Nintendo’s new console I am ready to provide some first impressions.

Sadly, the first minutes with my Wii U were one epic user experience flaw: Instead of jumping into the new console experience I had to download a huge day-one patch after booting, which took nearly 40 minutes. But after that painful process of waiting the typical lounge and zen music starts and you are back in the family-friendly Nintendo universe.

The Wii U gamepad works better than I remembered (I played a few Wii U games at gamescom Cologne this summer). It is fairly light and the touchscreen works quite well – although it’s still less reliable than current gen smartphones or tablets with capacitive touchscreen technology. And compared to more traditional game controllers the Wii U gamepad is huge. I have really large hands, but it still feels a bit odd. I think I will get used to it the more I play. Personally, I had some problems with the position of the right-sided buttons. In contrast to the XBox360 an PS3 pads, the buttons are beneath the right analogue stick and – even worse – the button for canceling menu options or actions (B) is on the exact same position of the button to confirm actions on the other consoles (XBox360: A, PS3: X). I bet this is also a thing I have to get used to, but at the moment I often confuse the buttons and pick the wrong one. The Pro Controller looks pretty much like a XBox360 pad but shares the same button layout on the right side as the Wii U gamepad. I prefer using the Pro Controller over the Wii Remote & Nunchuck combination if possible (sadly, not every game supports the Pro Controller).

Enter Nintendoland. It’s a collection of minigames themed with different Nintendo classics like Metroid, Pikmin, Mario etc. It’s cute but the forced tutorials with the ugly robot avatar really killed my experience at the beginning. Instead of exploring Nintendoland by yourself, the robot guides you in every little step you make – there is even a tutorial you have to pass to get to the game’s settings. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed playing through the Metroid-themed minigame, but the Nintendoland really shines in Luigi’s mansion, the Harvest Moon and the Catch-Mario games. All three games are a great example for asymmetric gameplay, in which one player takes a special role (e.g. the ghost) using the new Wii U gamepad and competes against the other players (e.g. the ghost hunters) with oldschool Wii Remotes.

A pretty similar approach can be found in ZombiU – one of the few exclusive core games for the Wii U. In its multiplayer you can choose between the zombie king and a survivor. The survivor has to kill zombies with the Pro Controller (or Wii Remote & Nunchuck) in FPS-style, while the zombie king drops zombies on the map using the Wii U gamepad. The zombie king mode looks a bit like a RTS-game and I had a lot of fun dropping zombies all around my colleagues playing with me the local multiplayer. The singleplayer uses the Wii U gamepad to scan, use items or pick-up stuff. Although I like the usage in most cases, it sometimes feels a bit too forced compared to the great multiplayer.

The third game I got is New Super Mario Bros. U, which is a great Mario game but makes only little use of the new Wii U pad. I am really curious to see how other upcoming games will use the new Wii U gamepad – in my opinion, the asymmetric local multiplayer is the way to go and the only chance to compete against Microsoft and Sony for now.

My recommendation: Wait and see. There are only a few games, which make great use of the new gamepad and two new consoles are around the corner. Nintendo and the 3rd party developers have to deliver more exclusive games to make this console a must-buy for gamers.

Review: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (PS3)

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Although I’ve been pretty busy in the past month I managed to play through XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Back in the 90s I invested far too many hours in the original game and killed aliens, built up my bases and did research. The beauty of he new XCOM game is that it takes the formula of the original game and extends and streamlines it in a perfect way. I was really surprised how well the gamepad controls work. Firaxis did a good job in using the buttons for the different actions and it I was very pleased to recognize that you need two or three missions to adapt the interface.

Nevertheless, there are some small issues I came across. The game lets you only rotate in steps of 90 degrees, which helps a bit to orientate (where is the landing zone, where is my target) due to only four possible setups but often generates confusing situations in smaller rooms or complex installations like larger UFOs. I often tried to get the best possible perspective on the situation but discovered that all four possible camera setups were not satisfying. Another issue relates to the selection of actions of your marines. With growing experience your marines receive new abilities, which is a great feature. But the abilities are all lined up in the interface, sometimes continuing in a second line of boxes representing the abilities. I often tried to skip some actions by moving the cursor down or up between the lines, but this is not possible. The only way to get to the second line is scroll left or right until you reach the end of the first one.

I mastered the game once in normal mode and started a second one in the impossible mode, which is really tough. The aliens hit better and harder, you hit worse and your marines panic more often. But the missions are not the real difficulty (at least if you’re not playing ironman mode) – my problem was the meta game with the panic level of the countries you have to protect. One mistake I made in my second playthrough was not directly going after the engineers, which would have been necessary to build more workshops, receive even more engineers, build a satellite uplink and dispatch more satellites. The game won’t tell you, that it is better to start looking for engineers early. I think this is fine for an impossible mode, where you have to look after every detail but I wish there were more hints on this issue.

I had a lot of fun with my first playthrough and I am still confident that I’ll master the impossible mode in my second attempt. I also had a lot of fun modifying my marines to look like my friends and telling them how they are doing in the game (see the LEGO version of my squad above). XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a great game and if you’re into round-based strategy games you should consider buying it.

GUI Wars 2 vs. World of Tooltips: The tutorials

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Although I have little time at the moment I spent a few hours this week in Guild Wars 2 and the new World of Warcraft add-on Mists of Pandaria. There were only a few hours between playing a fresh-faced Pandarian monk and a Norn necromancer and I was really surprised how different both tutorials worked for me. Before I start going into details I must admit that I played a lot of WoW in the early years but dropped it due to a lack of time, so haven’t been around Azeroth for a long time. And I never played Guild Wars 1, so I definitely have it easier to get back into WoW, than start learning a new game.

Nevertheless, when I got back into WoW a lot of things changed when it comes to the skill system, the quest help and some smaller interface functions. The WoW tutorials are very linear with a pre-defined line of quests one should follow. The interface and in-game interactions are very well described and pop-up in the moment you need them. As a veteran player it might sometimes be annoying with all the offered help you do not need, but then again, you can easily skip all tooltips and hints. I was even more impressed when I stopped running through the Pandarian starting zone and reactivated my old paladin back from the days. The new skill system was easy to pick-up due to unobstrusive but helpful tooltips how to distribute the skill points.

Entering Guild Wars 2. I rolled a Norn necromancer because I liked the style. The interface looks pretty familiar if you already played an MMORPG and some of the in-game information visualization is pretty standard as well (quest hosts, map highlights). Regarding the tutorial, Guild Wars 2 does a lot of things wrong. There are pop-up messages pointing at different GUI elements or some which introduce key shortcuts. From my first hours of play, it seems that these messages pop-up randomly or at least not necessarily at the time you need a description of the respective mechanic (or much later after plenty of time already using the mechanic). I missed also tooltips for items or equipment slots, because I did not know how to use them or what effect they would have if I use them. In addition, the quest system is designed very flexible right from the start, so you receive additional quests for events around you, but they come and go very fast, which might ask a bit too much from beginners.

In my opinion the lack of linearity in the beginning is not the biggest issue of Guild Wars 2, but it is how the tooltips do (not) adapt to the player’s actions. Of course it is easier for the tutorial designers to provide the right information at the right time when the first minutes or hours of play move along a linear path. Guild Wars 2 should focus on the basic actions and goals of the game and save some of the complexity for later on. Techniques like phasing allow different players in the same game area to see different things according to their status, which could serve a tutorial very well.

That being said, I enjoyed Guild Wars 2 more than the return to World of Warcraft, because of the more flexible way of questing and leveling and the impressive visuals of Tyria. Then again, I only had a few hours of time, which is far away from sufficient to rate an MMORPG.

Review: Rayman Origins (PS Vita)

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Another game which I played a lot during my holidays was Rayman Origins – the beautiful 2D-Jump’n'Run game with Ubisoft’s Rayman (but without the ravin’ rabbits, which I did not miss at any time). And when I say beautiful, I mean it: The game looks like a painting coming alive. The backgrounds are full of wonderful details and the level themes offer a lot of variety. In addition, the animations of Rayman and all enemies and other characters look great and fluent all the time.

The only downside of the fluent animations is that the player sometimes doesn’t exactly know where the collision box of the character ends. It often happened to me that I missed a jump by a few pixels or was surprised that an enemy hit me before I could hit him. This happens not all the time but often, so I think this is a trade-off for having those beautiful fluent character animations.

Although I played quite some time without collecting all the coins, the campaign still continues with more and more great level designs and I highly recommend you to buy this game if you got a weakness for 2D Jump’n'Run games. Rayman Origins is available not only for PS Vita but for all other major home consoles.

Review: Resistance – Burning Skies (PS Vita)

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During my summer holidays I spent some more quality time with my PS Vita. One of the games I played through was the mobile adaption of the Resistance series: Resistance: Burning Skies.

It doesn’t matter if you played the PS3 games of the series or not – this is a pretty straightforward FPS game, which will be easy to pick up for anyone playing FPS games on a console thanks to the twin analogue sticks of the Vita. The game looks really great and has a high frame rate, which seems to drop only a bit in the multiplayer matches. The game is more linear than its PS3 predecessors and has some small usability flaws you don’t wanna see in a 2012 release: The cut scenes cannot be skipped, some save points are too far away from critical scenes and require the player often to run a bit more than necessary and running controls are messed up (you gotta press down on the d-pad and up on the left analogue stick simultaneously…).

Despite these small flaws the game is great fun and I really enjoyed playing through the campaign which took me around 6 or 7 hours. After that I jumped into the multiplayer deathmatches, which caught me by surprise because it really feels like playing a good FPS multiplayer game on a home console. I played a lot of games on my previous mobile consoles but THIS is the first game, where the multiplayer part is on par with the rest of the game.

If you own a PS Vita and like playing FPS games on the console, I highly recommend to buy Resistance: Burning Skies.

Why Nathan Drake’s latest adventure isn’t as much fun as it could have been: Golden Abyss Review (PS Vita)

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After spending some quality time with Nathan Drake in his latest adventure called the “Golden Abyss” on my PS Vita I am double-minded how to judge this game. It is one of the best looking games on the Vita and catches a lot of the atmosphere of Nathan’s adventures on the PS3. I also like the shorter episodes, which work very well being on tour.

But there are some things, which really got me frustrated and I am looking especially at you, mini-games. To those of you who haven’t been in touch with the game: There are several mini-games like shooting photos, cleaning items or tracing stone markings on paper. Most of these games force gamers to use the motion or touch controls and it’s not difficult to imagine how these mini-games made it into the game, considering the fact that Golden Abyss is one the main launch titles for Vita and here to show the full potential of the console. The idea may sound right to introduce the different input methods by mini-games but most of them are dull and repetitive or suffer from inaccurate controls. In addition, there is some much stuff to collect (and to miss) in the levels, it’ll be too frustrating for most players to collect everything to unlock the correspondent trophies.

The mini-game I probably find most frustrating is cleaning-up the archaeological items you find. You have to use the backside touch of the Vita to rotate the item and the front touch controls to clean it. Sadly, the developers implemented a spherical model, which is quite difficult to control. I often find myself making random inputs on the backside touch controls after I lost control of the rotation. The cleaning gets even more frustrating because the texture size you have to clean with your finger movement is often a bit larger than the model shown on the screen, which leads to random cleaning moves on the front screen because the visualization says you’re already done.

In addition to the mini-games, some flawed controls can be also found in the main game. Balancing on a stem with the accerelometer or performing swipes on the touchscreen during close combat make me feel like playing one of the cheaper smartphone games with a lack of precision. This wouldn’t bother me that much if those were optional controls but sadly they’re the only way to interact with the game in this situation.

Still, Golden Abyss is a good game but I could have been much better without the mini-games and if the developers decided not to throw every potential way of interaction of the Vita into the game with no alternative input options.

Everything’s better with lasers…?! My first weeks with SWTOR

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I spent some quality time with Star Wars: The Old Republic during the past weeks and want to share some thoughts on Bioware’s fresh-faced MMORPG. Although I did not expect a revolution of MMORPG game design, I was surprised that Bioware took very little risk by sticking to many well-known and established MMORPG standards. On the other hand, Bioware did a great job of capturing the atmosphere of the Star Wars Universe. Sound, art and character design are top-notch, although the texture quality is some years behind. Another thing that bothers me is that in the vast openness of the galaxy, the space combat runs on rails (here’s my hope that Bioware will release a full-fledged space combat add-on).

Surprisingly, Bioware did not so well with the whole graphical user interface (GUI). There are only a few options to modify your GUI, but it is far away from the freedom of interface modifications within games like World of Warcraft. That wouldn’t bother so many players, if only Bioware delivered a great GUI right from the start. Here are some examples for what went wrong:

The sum of your characters’s and companion’s actions grows fast and with them the need to organize all the fancy little icons across the screen. With only three control bars on the left, right and in the middle, Bioware offers only little room for placing all those action icons or additional items like medipacks. Especially the companion’s standard interface is far away from being intuitively understandable and easy to control.

Several pop-up menus like the inventory or the skill trainer options feature tabs, which can be found at the bottom of the pop-up window and not – as most users would expect them – at the top. Futhermore, they are comparatively small, with a dark font (cause it is a deactivated tab, right?) on a darker background and for this reason quite difficult to spot. It took me 10 minutes of searching and asking other players to find the mission items in my inventory (which have their own tab).

Another flaw is the button for leaving a flashpoint (instance) – it’s so tiny, that I wouldn’t have registered it without the help of my guild mates. The beauty of an MMOG is that you can ask people if you do not find the right button or option (which people do a lot in the general chat), but especially for MMOG newbies it would have been helpful to provide a more intuitive GUI.

But there are also some interface improvements in comparison to other MMORPGs. I really like the vertical beams of light, which direct you to the NPC’s loot.

After some weeks with SWTOR I have mixed feelings about the game. On the one hand I really enjoy the whole Star Wars atmosphere, the great character and art design and the dialogues. But on the other hand the characters and dialogues cannot draw off the attention of the fact that this a standard MMORPG that has a lot in common with the last generation of MMORPGs – except the great Star Wars license. In addition, the interface is neither intuitive enough for beginners nor offers enough modification options for experienced players to adapt their interfaces to their play style. Hopefully, Bioware will fix this soon – because if there is one further common ground in MMORPGs, it’s the regular updates.

In the grim dark future is only war… and annoying grenades?

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Last weekend I played through Warhammer 40K: Space Marine on my PS3 (yeah, I know I am bit late with that one). First I have to admit that I always enjoy visiting the Warhammer 40K universe with those fancy space marine servo suits, orks in space and the over-sized weaponry. Sadly, the story and the dialogues are completely forgettable and the game would have been more enjoyable with a bit more variety within the level and art design.

But we’re in the grim dark 40th century and looking for some action, right? In most cases you start approaching the enemy’s forces by some short-range shooting with your guns but end in close-combat surrounded by a group of enemies. That’s not only because your Space Marine rocks in close-combat but also due to the fact that the only way to regenerate health is dropping finishing moves on your enemies at close range.

Sometimes the third-person camera comes so close to your servo suit hero that you have to manually zoom out, while bashing buttons or continue bashing buttons and pray to the emperor that you’ll hit some foes. You may get used to this issue, but close-combat has a much more serious problem. If you’re starting a finishing move a fixed animation starts and will last some seconds with optional quick-time event button pressing to overwhelm your combatant. During this fixed finishing scene no other enemy can touch you in close-combat, which works similar to the quick-time events and finishers in God of War or other hack’n slay games. I am ok with the fact that other enemies can shoot at you during the finisher, but which really annoyed me was the fact that – especially later on in the game – there was a high chance that someone would throw a grenade right to your feet during the finisher phase. You see the grenade landing nearby, hear the warning – and can do absolutely nothing. Neither can you stop the finisher nor can you kick back the grenade or evade it. You just sit there and watch your Space Marine die. Dear Relic Entertainment – why not include another quick-time event to add a chance to escape this situation?

Shooting works out pretty fine until you come across a stationary weapon that is even larger than your super-sized weapons you already carry around. To use the weapon you have to approach the weapon and press a button, which shows up when you stand in the right area of interaction. Sounds pretty easy. But the tolerance for the area of interaction seems to be pretty small, so I often walked back and forth several times to exactly hit the right spot in order to use or rip-off the super-sized weapon in front of me (ripping it off is always better to keep moving and make a use of cover). Being veteran gamers we all know that big guns are there for a reason (e.g. large waves of enemies or boss fights) and that’s why it is a frustrating experience when you approach the weapon and cannot use it immediately because those enemies won’t wait until you are ready. Come on, Space Marines are not known for their fine motor skills, so why do I have to take several attempts to use the big guns?

That said, Space Marine delivers great combat action but it would lead to less frustration if someone would have taken care of these issues.

Nintendo DSi Review

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When I pre-ordered Nintendo`s new version of the enormous successful handheld (>100 million sales), I already knew that the changes on this successor wouldn`t be revolutionary (which matches perfectly the slightly changes of  the console`s name) but would give the handheld some interesting additional features.

After unboxing I first did a few tests with the camera and the audio tools which are nice to play around for a few minutes but which can – from a technical point – beaten easily by any mobile phone. It will be interesting to see how many good games with camera support will be released – the first one, Wario Ware Snapped, is nice but not does not work very well if you are on tour. Or if your face has the same color as the wall behind you. Or the poster. Or the blue sofa. IF you have good light AND contrast conditions the game works and shows some opportunities what to do with the new feature. But the game is far away from being a system seller (see the video for some impressions of the game).

The whole GUI of the DSi is pretty well done, except some minor issues. One of these issues I came across is the Wireless LAN setup. The console has 6 slots to save different wireless connections BUT only slots number 4,5 and 6 work with my WLAN security protocol. Every other gadget recognizes my WLAN protocol automatically, but the DSi does not. It took me three tries to understand how the whole dialogue works and given the fact that this should be a console for non-techies too, I am a bit disappointed by Nintendo (or of my skills).

Another dialogue problem is the shop interface. It is not easy to distinguish buttons, information boxes or signs from another and the logical structure of the whole shop is not that easy to understand as the one for the Wii. And this is not only a problem of the small screen size of the DSi, it is in some parts, poor interface design and usability. But, here is the chance for Nintendo to do better: Everything can be updated now :)

A problem I did not encounter yet is the new position of the power button. I heard some people hitting it by chance and kicking themselves out of the game. The new sound adjustment works fine for me – with two buttons instead of one bar you have a more precise control of the sound volume.

The main reason I bought the DSi (given the fact that I bought both previous designs, too) is the SD slot and the opportunity to download small games and apps. The first games and apps (like the browser) do not show the full potential of the service and I really hope Nintendo starts releasing classic games for the DSi like they do with the ‘virtual console’ service on the Wii.

My final statement: If you have no DS till now and consider buying one: Pick the DSi. If you already have a DS: Just wait a few months until interesting download content shows up.

How to clone a GUI

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Yesterday saw the release of the free-to-play MMORPG ‘Runes of Magic’ and after installing it I gave it a short test run. Anyone who played ‘World of Warcraft’ (WoW) before (and that includes me) will notice that the game looks in many ways like Blizzard`s successful MMORPG. The colourful comic graphics, the avatars and the graphical user interface (GUI) look like the developers tried to stay as close to WoW as they could. Take a look at the screenshot I made during the first minutes of play:

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Character portrait, health and mana bars, target info, minimap, chat window, experience bar and the character`s abilities are easy to recognize if you are familiar with WoW. Even most of the pre-defined hotkeys work in the same way.

My first impression: This game is fairly easy to pick up – especially when you are not new to the genre of MMORPGs. I made 4 levels in about 10 minutes of play by killing some creepy fungus monsters and talking to lot of NPCs. As this is a game which shall entertain for days and months, I have to play further to get a better idea of the gameplay and the more interesting features like the hybrid character classes. Till now it seems like ‘Runes of Magic’ is not a revolution in terms of gameplay but for a free-to-play game it looks quite good.

Although, the first minutes of play showed already some downsides of the free-to-play business model: Not enough slots in your inventory? Buy some more. Hey, you have a mount for one day. If you wanna keep it longer, buy one. So micropayment is there from the first minute and it will be interesting to see if you can get around without buying stuff and how the game experience will differ between players who pay for bonuses and the ones who don`t.